afening roar
stunned the sailors, and a vast cloud of smoke filled the air, shutting
out the sun.

The hot shot had fallen into the great magazine, where there were
hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, and the Negro Fort was no more. It had
been literally blown to atoms in a second.

The slaughter was frightful. There were, as we know already, three
hundred and thirty-four men in the fort, and two hundred and seventy of
them were killed outright by the explosion. All the rest, except three
men who miraculously escaped injury, were wounded, most of them so badly
that they died soon afterwards.

One of the three men who escaped the explosion unhurt was Garcon
himself. Bad as this bandit chief was, Colonel Clinch would have spared
his life, but it happened that he fell into the hands of the sailors
from the gun-boat; and when they learned that Garcon had tarred and
burned their comrades whom he had captured in the attack on
Luffborough's boat, they turned him over to the infuriated Seminoles,
who put him to death in their own cruel way.

[Illustration: BREAKFAST AND BATTLE.]

This is the history of a strange affair, which at one time promised to
give the government of the United States no little trouble, even
threatening to involve us in a war with Spain, for the fort was on
Spanish territory, and the Spaniards naturally resented an invasion of
their soil.

A WAR FOR AN ARCHBISHOP.

THE CURIOUS STORY OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT.

In the latter part of the tenth century Sviatozlaf was Grand Prince of
Russia. He was a powerful prince, but a turbulent one, and he behaved so
ill towards his neighbors that, when an opportunity offered, one of them
converted his skull into a gold-mounted drinking-cup, with an
inscription upon it, and his dominions were parcelled out between his
three sons--Yaropolk, Oleg, and Vladimir.

Yaropolk, finding his possessions too small for his ambition, made war
on Oleg, and conquered his territory; but his brother Oleg having been
killed in the war, the tender-hearted Yaropolk wept bitterly over his
corpse.

The other brother, Vladimir, was so grieved at the death of Oleg that he
abandoned his capital, Novgorod, and remained for a time in seclusion.
Yaropolk seized the opportunity thus offered, and made himself master of
Vladimir's dominions also. Not long afterwards Vladimir appeared at the
head of an army, and Yaropolk ran away to his own capital, Kiev.
Vladimir at once resumed the thr